Customer Reviews

Rabbit, Run

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a high school superstar only a handful of years ago. Now he is a young married father, trapped in the suburban 60's, unhappy with a cluttered house, a drunken wife, and a son who will never be the athlete he was. Will this former basketball star find a way to make his life better, or will he run like a rabbit? The title says it all and Harry Angstrom does indeed run whenever things don't go his way.

Leaving the house to pick up his son, he impulsively drives from his Pennsylvania home to West Viriginia. He wants to run to the sunny shores of Florida to live the life he feels he deserves. Surely a man like Rabbit deserves more in life, or so he imagines. Unable to complete this journey, he runs to his former coach, a tired and washed-up man who introduces him to a part-time prostitute. Rabbit moves in with Ruth that very night and they begin a relationship they flaunt and thus humiliate his very pregnant wife and both sets of parents.

Is there an ounce of unselfishness in Rabbit? The reader may think so when he returns to his wife the night she goes into labor. Their reunion is bittersweet and because in large part of Rabbit's inability to see beyond his own needs, their reunion burst apart in a senseless tragedy that is horrific but so beautifully written the reader is glued to the page hoping against hope this terrible thing is not happening.

Will Rabbit be able to grow up and realize he is no longer the high school hero? Will he be able to comfort his wife, to provide a home for her and his children? Will he forsake Ruth, the hooker who accepts him as he is but is now pregnant with his child? In which direction will Rabbit run this time?

In addition to the novel's main character, Updike gives us as fine an array of secondary characters as can be found anywhere. He elevates Janice and Ruth so that they are not stereotypical "bad wife" and "good-time girl" but sympathetic characters the reader can relate to. Most notable among the secondary characters is the minister, Jack Eccles, who takes upon himself the task of saving Rabbit. He becomes Rabbit's friend and marvels at the paradox of this character. For example, after spending the first night with Ruth, Rabbit has the need to go home and get clean clothes as he cannot function unless his wardrobe is clean and pressed. The minister inquires, "Why cling to that decency if trampling on the others is so easy?" Thus lies the paradox of this restless anti-hero, one the reader cannot admire but cannot help but root for and not turn away from. It is this same minister who so succintly sums up the essence of Rabbit when he lambasts him later by saying, "The truth is you're monstrously selfish. You're a coward. You don't care about right or wrong; you worship nothing except your own worst instincts." And therein lies the crux of Rabbit's character.

The novel's second half is quite intense and on finishing it there is no way I could leave Rabbit and the supporting characters behind. I had to know what happened, so immediately began the sequel RABBIT REDUX, the second in the four-part Rabbit series. I admit that had I read this when it was first published I would have been let-down by the ending since I like tidy conclusions. Waiting 11 years to find out what happened to Rabbit would have been an eternity. I could barely wait 11 seconds, so I'm glad I discovered these books and Updike only recently.

This is a Great Book - it must be - the NYT and other literary experts say so. Rabbit's life is awful - his wife's a drunk, his job sucks, nothing is really what he thought life would be. He tries to run away and fails at that too. According to Time magazine, Rabbit Angstrom is "an unflinchingly authentic specimen of American manhood". Yikes! Let's hope not - but maybe there is more truth in it than one likes to admit.

It's hard not to recommend reading this book even though reading it is really not an enjoyable experience. Rabbit evoked powerful emotions in this reader - especially anger and depression; maybe a little anxiety. You are almost guaranteed to feel worse after you read this book - especially if you can identify with any part Angstrom's angst. On the other hand, the mature reader (er, middle-aged) who has experienced the fullness of life's sorrows may sort of shrug at Rabbit as if to say 'what did you expect from life? Pull yourself together, son.'

Read at your own risk.

I always find it interesting that in a lot of extended series of novels, the first book tends to be compact and to the point, while later novels tend to be more sprawling and expanded. Glancing over my line of Updike's Rabbit novels, of which this is the first, that seems to be the case, but time will tell whether those later books successfully trade the taut intensity of this novel for a more spacious feel. The Rabbit novels take up four books, all tracing the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a man growing up in the latter part of the twentieth century, with each book taking place in a different decade, highlighting not only the changes in Harry but the changes in the country itself as it winds through the crazy years of the 1900's. This book takes place in the early fifties or late sixties and introduces us to the man himself, Rabbit, who does his best to fulfill the verb embedded in the title and run as far as he can. Harry feels trapped in his marriage, with a three year old already present and his wife heavily pregnant and drinking all the time, he takes a look at his dreary life and wigs out, trying to drive as far away as he can before coming back and attempting to find himself, with increasingly flailing results. His quests lead him to encounter a priest, a prostitute, an old coach and his parents and in-laws, all of whom have advice and none of which seem to have the right advice. So Harry tries to forge his own way but that might not be right either. The book doesn't have so much of a plot as it consists of shifting stream of consciousness impressions, all told with Updike's carefully controlled prose, lunging from beautiful descriptions of the outside world and the people in it to searingly brutal internal monologues that are only matched by the terrible things people say to each other. There's hardly a likeable character in the entire novel and that's where the real truimph comes in because even when you have all these imperfect people you keep reading anyway, watching them trying to find meaning in their grey lives, with nobody really sure what to do. And in the center of it all runs Rabbit, serving to cause everything even as he's only reacting against what's happening to him. People throw the word "anti-hero" around when describing him and it's not too far off, he's selfish and hypocritical and impulsive and utterly self centered but yet there's a fascinating sincerity about him, a tragic sense that he's certain he's doing the right thing even as he brings it crumbling down even further. None of the characters are angelic, all hide their own motives and quirks and it only makes them more sympathetic because they're dealt flawed cards to begin with and sometimes in trying to make the best of it they only muck things up further. The latter half of the book is remarkably intense considering it's about suburban life and the pivotal moment goes by like a slow motion car wreck, a horror far worse than anything Stephen King ever crafted unfolding before you. You know what's going to happen about halfway through and you keep reading in the hopes that your intuition isn't true. Updike's words masterfully give voice to the numbness inside all of them and even if he's wordier than he should be at moments it doesn't matter because the sheer tide of his telling carries us through. The book depicts people who are alternatively saints and monsters and really none and so fall somewhere in between, just like any of us. Rabbit runs, but it gets him nowhere and with a character this rich, readers have to know that we'll eventually see what happens beyond the ending. And yes there are three more books. But even if you can only read one, this is enough. That there's three more waiting is just an afterthought, a way to see what happens in the movie after the credits stop rolling and everyone else has gone home. Regardless of anything else, here's where it starts.

Reading Updike's sentences is a breathtaking experience. He has a rare ability to transpose ordinary experiences into rarefied grounds without falsely heightening experiences themselves. Each sentence, each event in the novel is carefully considered and calibrated, so that no sentence or description seems wasteful. The technical facility of Updike is truly something to marvel at, even surpassing the lyricism of Cheever. The way he writes about sex, adultery and guilt in this book is unparalleled in 20th century American fiction, and I haven't seen any other writer come close.

Taken as an individual novel, however, it fails to rise to the status of a 'great american novel.' Although the writing is unsurpassingly beautiful, the plot is a bit thin, and ideas it expresses, commonplace. Minus the prose, the story tracks the wanderlust and guilt of Harry Angstrom, a man who still wants to hold on to his glorious boyhood, and seeks to escape his oncoming adulthood and life of ordinariness. It's a well-traveled premise for a novel, but executed and polished to a hilt.

As we see Rabbit Angstrom struggle to keep apace with his given life, we are meant to see the social milieu that he lives in. Readers do get an acute sense of time and place, but what of it? Not that all fiction should strive for the Meaning of Life (how dreadful would that be?!), but the feeling you get after reading 'Rabbit, Run' is that of caffeine rush which you know will fade. And it does.

I don't mean to slight Updike's legacy - he is one of the best writers we have in the States. And read as a tetralogy, the Rabbit books do encapsulate four decades of Americana with a sprawling and lyrical sweep. It truly is an accomplishment. As an individual novel, 'Rabbit, Run' is emotionally involving and a hell of a good read. But it moves us tantalizingly close to showing us what literary greatness is, then ultimately leaves us short.

What makes "Rabbit, Run" such a staggering masterpiece is -- paradoxically -- its very ordinariness.

The novel is about a former high school basketball star, now married, with a family, who is finding his adult life claustrophobic. He misses his youth -- the adrenaline rush of sports, the sense that life is full of possibilities. He doesn't know what to do about it. He tries to make some kind of change, with what's left of his youthful energy. He's self-centered, but he's also a dreamer.

The book is sad, in that it offers no "solution" to the frustration of leaving youth behind. But it's also reassuring and poignant, because the theme is so universal.

Updike manages to keep this apparently ordinary story interesting without being philosophical or tedious. His vivid, compassionate descriptions of characters and their neighborhoods are phenomenal. He has a way of illuminating the inner workings of American optimism (sports heroes, suburban consumer culture) without looking down on it. In fact, he seems to cherish it, focusing his lens on the unspoken dreams that make our society and our personalities what we are.

This book -- along with its sequels -- is one of the great pieces of American literary art.

PS If that's not enough to grab you, read it for Updike's incomparable descriptions of lovemaking. Arrestingly specific and vivid. Only a handful of authors can actually describe sex -- I mean, really describe it -- and show the way people's personalities are played out in bed just like they are anywhere else. The main character is a charismatic, self-absorbed yearner, in search of his lost youth at all times -- even during sex. In Updike's world, sex isn't pornographic -- it's part of life.

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that, prior to checking out "Rabbit, Run" from the library a few days ago, I had never read ANYTHING in my 38 years by John Updike. What a mistake! First, as many other reviewers (here and elsewhere) have pointed out, Updike is an amazing, powerful, beautiful prose stylist. In my opinion, and admittedly having only read one Updike book ("Rabbit, Run") now, I would say that he ranks up there as one of the greatest American fiction writers of the 20th century. In some ways (stylistically and thematically), Updike reminds me of another great (albeit problematic) American 20th century writer, Norman Mailer (his masterpiece, "The Naked and the Dead," specifically comes to mind). Second, I'm just in awe of how clearly, accurately, and powerfully Updike - at only 28 years of age (!) - was able to say so much in "Rabbit, Run," capturing the zeitgeist of a time and place (drab, grey, conformist, late 1950s suburban American hell, as epitomized by Brewer, Pennsylvania), and presenting his characters with such nuance, balance, wisdom, honesty, and - most importantly - truth. Incredible. Finally, I don't feel that it's an exaggeration to say that "Rabbit, Run" (and its sequels, which I haven't read, but have read about) is one of the most important achievements in American literature EVER.

So, what is "Rabbit, Run" about? In terms of themes, we've got a huge amount of material here (this is one big, meaty "rabbit" of a book!). Life, death and sex -- in fact, lots of sex ("Rabbit" is certainly an appropriate nickname in this context!!). Courage to face life (and marriage, children) vs. giving in to "rabbit-like" fear. Commitment/responsibility vs. freedom/running away. Religion vs. true faith (and what, if anything, such true faith might consist of). Sin vs. redemption. The fate of an individual attempting to find meaning and identity while fitting in (or not) to a stultifying, stifling, conformistic society (and ones' particular place/role in it). The romantic fantasy of busting loose, hitting the road, and finding a better place. (Personal note: as a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, I was strongly reminded in "Rabbit, Run" of "Born to Run," "Darkness on the Edge of Town," etc. with their many similar themes). Physical perfection/athletic achievement as potential sources of meaning, especially when you're past your "prime" ("Rabbit" was a high school basketball star, but now mainly relives his fading "glory days," as Springsteen would say). Growing up vs. remaining an eternal youth. Order vs. chaos. And, ultimately, the difficult balancing act between ones' quest for PERSONAL happiness and fulfillment vs. the needs of family, friends, employers, society. And much more.

Is this book, as some reviewers here have stated, "depressing?" Well, actually, I'd have to say yes. For one thing, Updike presents no definitive answers to all the important, dark, disturbing questions he raises here (nor could he, nor, as an artist, SHOULD he, in my opinion!). Meanwhile, almost everything his main character (Rabbit) touches somehow turns out wrongly, or tragically (the misery and alcoholism of his wife, leading to the book's climactic tragedy, being the greatest example). Plus, the setting of "Rabbit, Run" is inherently gloomy (dreary, "dung" colored apartment buildings which smell of "cabbage cooking" or "something soft decaying," a deserted ice plant with "rotting wooden skids on the fallen loading porch," etc.). People are mainly unhappy, or trapped, or scared, or confused, or looking for a little excitement to brighten up their dreary existences, or all of the above. So why read such a depressing book? Here are just a few reasons: to learn, to experience the world through the eyes of a great artist (Updike), to challenge yourself, to enjoy the sheer beauty of top-notch writing. Finally, a philosophical question: is the point of reading (or any other activity) simply "pleasure?" Should we run, like a rabbit perhaps, from anything that might scare us, or threaten us, or even depress us? Or should we stand our ground, look those things straight in the eye, and - unlike Rabbit Angstrom - NOT run. Personally, I vote for the latter option!

This is a quirky little novel about a young husband and father who simply decides he doesn't want to deal with the complications of his life anymore. What does he do? Gets in the car and drives. Just drives. No plan, no particular destination...just "away". Turns out the plan (or lack of it) is ill-conceived. After driving all night, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom turns his car around and drives back into his little Pennsylvania town. He spends the rest of the novel avoiding his (alcoholic) pregnant wife, taking up with women of questionable moral character and having chat sessions with the local priest who's trying to talk him into the right thing: returning to his family.

Rabbit is a local high school basketball hero, but he's become dissatisfied with his loss of luster in the early adult years when he's nothing more than ordinary...ordinary and saddled with too much adult responsibility. He's a bit of a cypher. His dialogue is short and clipped and he seems a bit of a dunce. The world baffles him. He's not particularly likeable.

Of the two novels I've read in the series (this and Rabbit Redux), this is the less interesting of the two. Rabbit is simply not fleshed out enough in this initial offering. There's not enough of him "there" to get interested in. It's not until "Rabbit Redux" that Harry's life becomes far more fascinating.

Not only until I was near the end of "Rabbit, Run" did I notice that this novel has many similarities with Ingmar Bergman's movie "Scenes From a Marriage". Both talk about the cold feet that husband and wives have after a period of being married. This is not the only thing they share in common, they are both brilliant. Using a polished and beautiful prose, Updike wrote a novel that grabs you by your rabbit ears and never let you go. You don't have to be a young male American to feel related to Rabbit's life. I believe that most people go through his very same issues sooner or later in one's life.

Sure Rabbit is selfish --who isn't? -- but his motivations are his fears, rather than his egotistical feelings. His fear of failing as a father, a son, a husband, actually, as a human being is what makes him move from one point to another; to change things is his life. His unhappy marriage, his dead-end job are just symptoms of a bigger disease, and in this angst that lies the central spine of this splendid novel.

At the beginning of the narrative when Rabbit is thinking of going somewhere --he's not sure where -- far from his family, he ask for directions in a gas station. The attendant, an old man, simply says: "Figure out where you are going before you go there." And, while Rabbit keeps that in mind, he fails to follow this advice. The fact that he goes through the motions in his life --he never seems to do anything with passion -- only proves that, like most youngsters, he is still trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. This is one of the biggest qualities of this novel, to portray someone's life so full of truth.

Updike writes with his heart and his brain, making a colorful prose and characters so believable that you don't want them to go when the book is over. Every character is believable, the wife, the parents, the in-laws. I think his idea has worked so well, that he expanded that in his more books, creating The Rabbit Tetralogy. "Rabbit, Run" is highly recommended to those who like literary and good books. And now, I'm looking forward to reading the sequels.

I suspect that many people don't know how to approach or evaluate a work of this type. Updike is a realist, which is to say that the fiction he writes is a reflection of the way things are, not a parable of the way the writer thinks things should be or a construction of an imaginary world. The reader will look in vain for an honorable protagonist, a fascinating mystery, many laughs, world-shaking events or major crimes. Updike's books are pretty much limited to tales of ordinary people doing ordinary things. This has brought complaints from both readers and the critics, throughout his long career, that his subject matter is trivial. But limiting the subject matter like this means that the books have to succeed based on their literary merits, and that is a very difficult thing to pull off.

Updike has wonderful skills in characterization, a poet's love of words and a musician's feel for their sound. The artistry of his prose is superb, better than that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Some of his finest phrases, although they may start out sounding rather mundane, contain delightful unexpected semantic twists that bring them to life. Two examples from Rabbit, Run are: From the first page: "The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires." From the first chapter, a sentence concerning Rabbit's intentions in his mad, aimless drive south: "He doesn't want to go down along the water anyway; his image is of himself going right down the middle, right into the broad soft belly of the land, surprising the dawn cottonfields with his northern plates."

Rabbit, Run is the first novel of the Rabbit series (there are five of them at this point by the way, not four as you might guess by the fact that only the first four have been published in the same volume) and in some ways I like it the best. Updike's trademark long run-on sentences, which can seem confusing or even annoying, are here cut to a minimum. Also I like the way he uses the mountain so effectively and consistently as a symbol of the line between innocence and vice.

As is the case in most of Updike's novels, this one has religion as one of its central themes. There is an ongoing debate in it about the existence of God. One interesting twist, though, is that the profligate, Rabbit, is the believer and the minister, Eccles, is the skeptic.

James Joyce, the pioneering twentieth-century English-language realist, whom Updike has acknowledged as one of his influences, once remarked that if the city of Dublin was destroyed it could be rebuilt from the information contained in the pages of his novel Ulysses. I'm not sure whether or not one could quite do that with the Reading, Pennsylvania area with the Rabbit novels. But I do know that, back in 1977, I was driving for only the second time in my life through southeastern Pennsylvania. I had read Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, the only books of the series that had been written at that point. I didn't know where they had supposedly taken place. For all I knew there may really have been a Brewer, PA. But as I rounded a corner on the highway, I gasped: There, spread before me, was the flowerpot-red city nestled along the river and the mountain rising directly behind it with a hotel at the top. The city was called "Reading." When I saw on the map that the town directly on the other side of the mountain was named "Mount Penn," I was sure that it must have been the prototype for Updike's "Mount Judge." It wasn't until nearly a decade later though, after I had relocated to a city not far away, that I verified that I had been right.

All of the Rabbit books, which were written at ten-year intervals, are also fascinating encapsulations of the eras in which they were written and their effects on the characters. So it is with Rabbit, Run. If your impression of small-town American life in the 1950's is epitomized by Leave it to Beaver on the one hand and Grease on the other, this book will give you a more realistic idea of it.

Has life ever seemed to much for you? Do you sometimes just want get away from it all? Well, here is a man that does it all for you, Mr. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. He is the man for running away from just about anything that is a conflict for him. Updike investigates this unfortunate soul of the suburban middle-class with the use of many similes, metaphors, motifs, and imagery. In "Rabbit, Run," John Updike's simple language brings reality to the central character of Harry and his boredom and disgust with his present life. In his early years at Mt. Judge High School, Harry was the star basketball player and this game was his life. In the beginning scene of the novel, Rabbit tries to recapture his ex-hero illusion of himself as a basketball star by playing basketball with a group of teenagers on the court. In this scene, we get a taste of Updike's use of rabbit imagery to enhance the rabbit qualities of Harry. When he arrives home, he regains the sour reality of his unfulfilled marriage, and his animal instinct tells him to flee. Like an animal, he can be gentle, but when he goes off on his own, he is the cause of all problems. In fleeing from his home, he experiences marital infidelity (a cental theme of many of Updike's books), the death of his baby, and ends up not a born-again-hero, but a man fleeing in panic from the realities of life. The quest motif is an important part of the novel in that Harry escapes from the imperfections in his life in search for a higher purpose. Because he is extremely sexually driven, he finds himself in the arms of Ruth, a prostitute that fulfills his need for an experienced cook and lover. Some of the scenes with Ruth are graphic and X- rated so I don't recommend this book to young children. Throughout the novel he possesses rabbit twitching and nervousness that causes others around him discomfort and pain. At the end of his quest, Harry does not find his higher purpose in life but ends up running aimlessly into the night.

Even though Harry was quite depressing , I found this book very enjoyable because of Updike's detailed use of imagery and motifs. This is just the first of the Rabbit trilogy books by Updike, and this novel drives me to read the other Rabbit books just to see what happens to Harry next. This is a must read on my reading list, and I recommend this book to all high school students and adults.